


Hanging in Suspense

by 221b_hound



Series: Lock and Key [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Dream Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasizing, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Fondling, M/M, Masturbation, Nipple Licking, Nipple Play, Post-His Last Vow, Reichenbach Feels, Rimming, Rope Bondage, Sexual Fantasy, Submission, Tattoos, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:30:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has three favourite wank fantasies, but when Sherlock catches him at the start of Number Three, John, embarrassed doesn't want to talk about it. But between Sherlock's deductions and John's courage, the story and its history will come out, and bring them closer together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The cornered French antiquities smuggler had never intended to harm anyone, and his continued propensity to do so was as much a function of bad luck as of panicked, knee-jerk lashing out. The dead guard might not even have counted as manslaughter – that was a heart attack, technically, rather than the assault from the enraged parrot flung into his face.

But the thing with knocking Sherlock in the side of the head with a 19th century tribal spear from Ghana and then nearly crushing his head with a 16th century cannonball would have been another matter. Fortunately, Sherlock was a swift mover.

Less fortunately for the smuggler, John Watson was also swift. And significantly more enraged and far more dangerous than the parrot. As Sherlock jerked aside (the cannonball fell from its display height, missed Sherlock's head by seconds-and-millimetres, and cracked in two in the tile floor) John had seized Sherlock's arm and pulled him further out of the way, then followed the momentum through to snatch up a slender metal shield from the same hodgepodge weapons display, spin with it in both hands and clobber the smuggler across the back, head and shoulder with it. When the target crashed to the floor, John flung the shield over his prone form and kneeled on it. He glared into their assailant's eyes, lip curled in unmistakable threat, and said, "Don't you fucking move."

The smuggler did not fucking move. Nor did John, except to throw over his shoulder, "Sherlock? Are you all right?"

"Fine," Sherlock replied, dusting himself off and then searching for the small blowpipe that had started the whole business. When he realised how hard John was breathing, he strode over to them. "I'm fine, John," he said more firmly.

John nodded curtly but didn't rise. Not until Lestrade came to take the bruised, frightened and wretched smuggler away.

Afterwards, John seemed as calm as ever. Sherlock needed to talk briefly to the curator and told John he'd see him at home.

John gave a soft grunt of assent, which held a note of irritation in it, but he left.

Sherlock took a long time to get back. John managed to restrict himself to a single text: _how valuable was that shield exactly?_

He got one reply: _£8000. It's only slightly dented._

It made John laugh. And then John decided that if Sherlock was going to be a while, he might as well take the solo path to getting rid of this nervous tension.

*

Sherlock was only half an hour behind John in the end – the curator was efficient as well as helpful on the matter of the flintlock – and he didn't even have to go to the downstairs room to know John wasn't there. Of course not. He stepped through the front door, paused, then, with an anticipatory smile, took off his coat, toed off his shoes and silently made his way upstairs.

The door was ajar. No sounds emerged. Not the squeaking of bed springs, nor suppressed moans or even controlled heavy breathing. No sound of hand on slick skin either.

Sherlock held very still. And there. A soft sound. John's breathing. Tightly controlled.

Sherlock shifted his weight from left leg to right so he could see into the room. See John lying on his back on the bed. Naked. Arms braced at his side. Legs spread, tense. Back arched slightly, chest rising and falling as though straining through the controlled breaths, head thrown back, eyes closed, lips parted. The lock tattoo gleamed darkly on his skin, a sheen of perspiration deepening the tones of the black ink lines.

John's erection jutted proudly up, thick, dark, crown sticky-wet with pre-come, upthrust and untouched.

The tension through every muscle of John's body was palpable, and every muscle was minutely flexing. Feet, thighs, buttocks, hands, arms. As though restrained – but without restraints.

As naturally as breathing, Sherlock took in the rest of the room, or at least the slice of it he could perceive.

_My robe is not in its usual place at the end of the bed. Why can’t I see…? Ah. Folded up beside his head, on my side of the bed. Olfactory stimulation._

_Curtains drawn, room in shadow, John’s eyes closed. His clothes are thrown over the wardrobe door rather than hung. Shoes kicked to the end of the bed instead of lined up by the chair. John disrobed rapidly and without his usual care. Tense and impatient; looking for stress relief in masturbation. Why isn’t he touching himself?_

_His body is responding unusually to absent – or rather imaginary – stimulus. His usual physical tools – the dog tags, the leather sofa – not present. Only my robe and this rigid posture, as though he is straining against ropes which are not there._

_John is fantasizing. I don’t recognise the signs of this one._

“John,” Sherlock murmured approvingly.

John’s eyes flew open, his alarm evident, and soon after, a certain awkwardness.

_He’s embarrassed again._

“Don’t stop,” said Sherlock softly, stepping into the room, hoping his warm tone would discourage that unnecessary response.

John’s fists clenched and he shut his eyes again. Forced his hands to relax and open again. “I wasn’t expecting you home for a while.”

“The curator was surprisingly helpful. That’s not important.” Sherlock went to his knees beside the bed, looking across at John’s closed expression, and breathed across the intervening space: “Please don’t stop. I want to see. Is this the third of your favourites?”

John’s mouth pursed then flattened and he opened his eyes at last. Without turning his head, he looked at Sherlock. “It’s… Fine. Yes. It’s the third one.”

“Tell me.”

“A man should have some privacy, you know.”

Sherlock blinked, puzzled. He had thought John was getting more comfortable with this rather entertaining, and previously spectacular, aspect of their sex lives. _What does John want to keep secret from me?_ John’s discomfort bothered him in ways he needed to examine, to explain this sudden hurt that in no way made sense.

He pushed back up to his feet and turned away. “Oh. Well. Fine, then.” His tone was crisp, the attempt to hide his disappointment resulting in a cadence of I-don’t-care that was patently false.

“No, Sherlock, wait…” John sat up and reached for Sherlock. Sherlock turned back to him, and John’s hand rested on the bed between them. “It’s not… it’s nothing bad or anything. I’m not… fantasising about someone else.”

Ah, yes, that jabbed at the heart of what Sherlock had disliked about John’s reticence.

“I’m just… it’s just… I...”

“Good god, John, I hardly think you could dream up something so peculiar that I wouldn’t countenance it.” Something in his tone conveyed quite clearly that he was completely up for whatever John’s febrile imagination had to offer.

John’s startled silence indicated that this message had been received and understood, and was being tucked away for further consideration. Yet he still drew his knees up to his chest, concealing his deflating cock, and wrapped his arms around his knees, protective instincts well and truly kicked in.

Sherlock peered, deduced, inferred. _His reaction is not about the act he’s fantasising, per se. It’s about the sentiment of it._

“Tell me,” he said again, more gently.

John grimaced slightly and wouldn’t look at Sherlock, focusing instead on his own knees. But he spoke.

“These… these fantasies, all of them – they started when I realised how I felt about you. How much I wanted you, but I didn’t think you wanted me. They weren’t really about us. Not about our real lives. They worked because we’d never been those people: pirates, or soldiers together in the warzone. And that made it easier. Scenarios about the real us, in our real lives, had the opposite effect. They made me feel worse. Sad. Lonely. So when I wanted to get off fantasising about you, we both became these other people, in these other stories, and that worked for me. But this one. This fantasy…”

He lowered his head further and spoke pretty much to his thighs. “I saw you die. I couldn’t do anything to save you, and I wasn’t enough to make you stay, and I knew… I realised I wanted… and it was all too late.”

 _Still and always this,_ Sherlock thought miserably. _This thing I did to us. Because I was desperate and stupid and vain._

John was deep in the telling of it now, though, and ploughed on, not looking at Sherlock.

“And then, this one night a few months after, I dreamed of your voice. Telling me… I don’t know. In the dream I couldn’t move and you were talking to me, and… and… touching me. I don’t even really know what you were saying. Good things, I think. That you…” John faltered again, and he finally raised his head again. “That you wanted me. You needed me. That you didn’t mean to leave. And you were touching me and then I… in my sleep… I came in my sleep. And I woke up. And I… I…” Two steadying breaths. “And I… _cried_ because you were still dead.”

John blew out a slow breath and finally, finally looked across at Sherlock, watching him with solemn attention. John’s smile attempted reassurance. “It was a long time ago. Before Mary, even.”

Sherlock didn’t know what to say. He thought something was expected, and warranted, but what, he couldn’t imagine. “John…”

“I’m just… I want to explain why this one’s different, and a bit difficult. Because that story, that dream, back then, didn’t help. But then, after I moved back here, after... I couldn’t touch myself for ages, you know. I’d start and then I’d see _her_ and she wouldn’t be Mary any more, or I could goddamn sense fucking Magnusson lurking in it, and it used to make me retch. So I tried thinking about you again… the stories that weren’t about the real us, but then I’d feel guilty and… it was all very monumentally fucked up, Sherlock. _Monumentally_. But after we started to settle into a routine again, back home here, I could… I’d… for those stories, anyway.”

Sherlock could tell John wanted to hide his face again, but John’s courage wasn’t only for gunfights and semtex vests.

“I heard you talking downstairs one night. I don’t even know who to. Probably just the skull again, or you’d forgotten I wasn’t actually down there again, and I… I remembered that dream. And I tried it. And it… for the first time in months… fuck, Sherlock. Our lives were back to you and me again, even if we weren’t together. I wasn’t ready yet, and I didn’t know if you would ever be ready at all, but I was just starting to think that maybe this _could_ be your area, you and me anyway, but … Jesus, I came so hard. Thinking about you like that. And it _was_ you. Sort of. Not _you_ precisely, but not the pretend you of the other stories. This was….” He huffed a sigh. “It’s still not a real thing. It’s not a thing I’d expect of you. I don’t even know if I’d want it for real. But as a story in my head, Jesus, Sherlock. Fuck.”

Which told Sherlock almost nothing and almost everything in the same breath. All the things John was doing and saying without even realising it.

Panty Corporal was a domination fantasy, set in the environment where John had been pretty much the king of his life. In it, Sherlock came to John (or rather, he was sent to John by Sholto, and Sherlock hadn’t yet decided what that relationship might have been, if he had been John’s last male lover). That was the fantasy of John accepting his desire for Sherlock, and acting on it while maintaining control.

But the pirate story was a different stage. In that one, John willingly broke ties with a socially acceptable past and offered himself into Sherlock’s world – into the strange life they had.

John’s character had boarded the Nightshade with the express purpose of pledging his services to the Pirate Captain. He gave the Captain his pleasure first, and at the end willingly conceded to the Brainstorm’s superiority. He wanted to be not just a crewmember like everyone else, but to be considered of sufficient value for higher service. From the dominance of the first fantasy, and for all the sexual prowess the lieutenant displayed in that crow’s nest (high above the others in the pirate’s life, and isolated, just the two of them), he was submitting himself to Sherlock’s command. He was not subservient but yes, it was a submission of sorts.

And now this fantasy, inspired by a dream, that left John too self-conscious to even articulate it properly.

_In your sex dream, I said good things to you. You didn’t move while I spoke to you and touched you…_

It seemed such an obvious thing, now he was considering it properly. _John wants to submit utterly, on occasion at least, but he’s afraid to admit it._

Sherlock knelt on the bed beside John and placed one hand on John’s ankle, the other on his shoulder. He leaned close and kissed John’s temple.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

John frowned, confused. “What? Why?”

“Because this fantasy began when I let you think I was dead. And then it brought you pleasure. And now you’re afraid to tell me that you want to surrender your control to me.”

“I’m…” John blinked hard at him and grimaced. “Does it disgust you, that sometimes I want to give myself up to you entirely?”

“No,” said Sherlock, “I think I would be honoured. Except…”

John flinched.

“I don’t hurt you in this story, do I? I seem to have managed that enough in actual life, and I find I wish rather better for you from me in your imagination.”

John managed a soft smile. “No. If anything… the opposite.”

“You give yourself up to me entirely, and I use the opportunity to be… kind?”

John actually grinned then. “I don’t know that _kind_ is the word, but certainly you look after me. In every conceivable way.”

Sherlock’s mouth pulled up in that wonderful smile that John remembered from so long ago. As though he couldn’t believe he had found a friend.

“Given my very obvious defects and challenges in that area, I would very much like to hear how to… look after you in every conceivable way. It may give me pointers.”

“You’re fine, Sherlock,” said John, coming at last out of his protective huddle, “We’re fine. How we are, everything we do. It’s all good. Great, in fact.”

Sherlock kissed John’s temple again, and John turned his face up to be kissed on the mouth.

“I would very much like to hear your story, John. You looked…” Sherlock blinked, almost shyly, “Stunning, on the bed then. Please.”

John slid a hand around Sherlock’s neck, another into his hair, and they kissed a good long while. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s back and held him close and kissed and kissed him, nuzzling his neck and ears, smoothing his hands down John’s spine and backside and thighs.

“All right,” John sighed at last, “But this one… this one’s very… quiet. I don’t… I don’t touch myself much, till the end. Maybe… and I know you find this difficult… but no questions this time, eh? No clarifications. I just… I’ll tell it. And you’ll listen. Okay?”

“Yes, John.”

John nodded and released Sherlock. He lay back down on the bed, shifting down so that his head wasn’t even on the pillow. Sherlock rested on his side, head propped up on his hand, leaving plenty of space between them.

John closed his eyes. Breathed in and out.

“So,” he said, “So, I’m in a dark room. I can’t see anything. I’m not blindfolded or anything. It’s just very dark.”

Sherlock said not a word.

“I’m naked, and I’m tied up.” John’s voice faltered slightly, and then he continued, “Not to a chair. It’s more… have you heard of shibari? Or Kinbaku? Japanese bondage. Aesthetic as well as sexual. I knew someone in Afghanistan who… never mind. The thing is… I’m tied with… silk, I suppose. It’s soft, broad cloth, so it doesn’t cut into me. It’s perfect, and I’m suspended. Don’t really know how. Probably a frame supporting it, I never really thought about it until now. I don’t even know if it’s actually possible to be tied up this way…”

“It doesn’t matter,” murmured Sherlock, hearing the tension rising in John’s voice, “I know of kinbaku. You’re naked, tied artistically and suspended in a dark space. Yes.”

“Yes. My hands are by my side but back a little, and my legs are spread and I’m.. I’m… sort of arched. Just a little. It’s very exposing. I’m very exposed there, in the dark, tied up. Waiting. But it’s comfortable. I can’t move but it doesn’t hurt. I’m supported. I feel… safe.”

Sherlock was already breathing hard, lying on their bed there in the dark. John’s body had shifted, too. He was lying on a mattress, but his legs had spread and he was holding his arms at his sides, but away from his body, exactly as he had described. He was pinioned by the imaginary binding. His head was back and his naked chest was thrust slightly up. His nipples were already hard and his cock had started to thicken again.

Sherlock was captivated.

“And then I hear you. Talking to me. _Deducing_ me.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has worked out some things about these fantasies of John's - things perhaps John doesn't realise he is revealing in them. John talks Sherlock through the third and most personal of his wank fantasies, until Sherlock can't passively listen one moment longer - and becomes an active participant.

_“Respiration rapid, shallow, but you’re not struggling against the bindings. To the contrary, you are relaxed. No anxious perspiration, your erection unflagging. Not fear, then, but anticipation. An interesting response, for a man whose therapist said he has trust issues.”_

_Sherlock’s voice does not come from one place, but moves around John in the darkness. The moment he hears Sherlock speak, John’s heart rate picks up, but he feels calm._

_“Trust,” says Sherlock close to his ear, but when he speaks again it is from further away, “You’re helpless now. So is this a test for you, or for me?”_

_John doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know the answer._

_“For both,” Sherlock concludes, his lips warm and soft and dry when he presses them to John’s eyelids._

_Sherlock’s hand presses against the centre of John’s chest, over the sternum, and rests warm there. Sherlock flexes his fingers and then slowly moves his hand, sliding it over John’s ribs, then down over his waist. He pauses to brush against an old scar._

_“Appendectomy. Single small incision indicating you were an adult when it occurred. Laparoscopic surgery did not become commonplace until the 1990s.”_

_Sherlock continues to stroke the scar. “It was an emergency procedure. I expect you were too focused on your studies to pay close attention to the pain to begin with.”_

_Next, John feels lips on his abdomen, over the scar, and then the tip of Sherlock’s tongue licking over each mark, joining the dots with a firm, wet slide, before kissing the whole area, open mouthed, licking and suckling at the skin._

_When the kiss stops, John feels bereft, but a moment later, the same exploring fingertips are now tracing the indent of the bullet scar in his shoulder. One finger traces the dent at the front while Sherlock’s whole palm presses against the more sprawling scar of the exit wound._

_The broad red ribbon entwining John’s body does not interfere with any of these explorations. John can feel the soft pressure of every broad swathe of cloth and it makes him feel anchored even as it restricts his movements to minute flexing and the arch of his back._

_“You were facing the man who shot you,” says Sherlock, caressing both scars, John’s suspension giving him access to John both front and back, “The angle of entry indicates you were level with the shooter, and at close range.”_

_Another softly mouthed kiss, a tongue-tip lick and kissed again. Sherlock’s lips are suddenly against his ear. “I almost lost you before I ever knew you. That doesn’t bear thinking about.”_

_John’s shuddering sigh hitches up as Sherlock’s hand suddenly fondles his erection, a slow stroke, then cups his balls, fondling them._

_Then his hand is gone. Sherlock’s voice, further away, says, “You’ve been waiting here a long time for me.”_

_“Yes,” John manages to reply, a huff of air more than a word._

_“Wait a little longer,” says Sherlock._

_“Yes,” breathes John again, but he thinks it is to empty air. Sherlock has gone._

_*_

_Imaginary Sherlock is a goddamned idiot,_ thought Sherlock, lying on his side, breathless at the sight of John, eyes closed, arms and legs pinioned with nothing more than pretence. He very much wanted to demand what _the hell_ his other self was playing at, leaving John tied up alone like that, in broad red ribbon, wrapped up like _a gift_ , only he had promised John he would _shut up_.

Next to him, John smiled, amused in the midst of his fantasy.

“You come back,” said John.

“Of course I do,” said Sherlock as though there’d never been any doubt.

John settled again, unaware (or so it seemed) of Sherlock’s gaze sweeping over his body – noting the bullet scar, the appendectomy scar, every other mark and blemish, every hair and line, every curve and plane, every imperfectly perfect inch of him.

Sherlock remembered looking at Irene Adler, naked and impenetrable, and wondered again why he had ever found her imperviousness fascinating. John’s body, like his mind, was a story, easily read, and yet full of depth and the unexpected. This fantasy, for example, and the way John used his body to help his mind tell the story.

“The next thing I feel,” said John, “Is an ice cube on my mouth.”

*

_The ice is already melting, and it glides over John’s lower lip._

_“You must be thirsty,” says Sherlock, and John is. He’s been here a long time. He licks the water from his lip; he feels a trickle of it escape in a cool bead over his lip to his chin, but a finger catches the droplet and slides into John’s mouth. John licks then sucks the finger._

_“Here,” says Sherlock, and now the ice cube is held between John’s lips, and he licks and sucks at that instead._

_And then, as he’s sucking on the ice, two fingers rub over one nipple, then the other. He moans, but keeps sucking at the melting ice, while Sherlock rolls the peak of one nipple between finger and thumb, soft then hard, then rubs soothingly over the pebbling flesh with his thumb._

_There in the dark, where John cannot see, Sherlock drags the ice cube out of his mouth – which is good, he’s not thirsty any more, or not for that – and slides it wetly down, over John’s chin and throat, down his chest, down over his navel, even over the base of his cock, around, under, the last of it melting in a sensuous slide against his perineum. John is shivering, but not with the cold._

_Sherlock’s hand continues, and his damp fingers cup one cheek of John’s arse and squeezes._

_“You’re a patient man,” he says._

_As Sherlock fondles and squeezes the cheek, John feels Sherlock’s thumb wriggle up into the cleft and push softly against his entrance. Sherlock’s thumb is wet and cool from the melted ice. It feels fantastic._

_Then Sherlock is sucking on John’s cock, just the crown of it, just for a few seconds, while his thumb rubs and caresses the puckered skin of his arse, and that’s fantastic too. John’s deep, growling moan conveys that very clearly._

_“I don’t know yet what I’m going to do,” says Sherlock against his ear a moment later, “I can never make up my mind. Will I fuck you with my thumb? Will I finger you and suck you off? I might spread you wide and fill you up with my cock and watch how I slide in and out of you until you beg to come.”_

_Both John’s nipples are being caressed now, firmly, the peaked nubs of them rubbed until his back is arching and he’s panting, and his neglected cock is so hard and thick and leaking…_

_*_

And it was, jutting right up, and John finally had a hand on himself. But he was still only touching it lightly, not yet ready to properly wank.

 _Imaginary Sherlock hasn’t decided what to do yet_ , Sherlock remembered. _It probably changes every time he does this fantasy._

Sherlock couldn’t keep his eyes off John, and he couldn’t keep his mind from unravelling not only what he saw but what he understood from what he saw. He should have realised that a surrender fantasy from John Watson would be more complicated than it seemed.

John had made himself vulnerable and helpless in this fantasy, yes, but in return, the imaginary Sherlock demonstrated that he actively wanted this red-ribbon-wrapped present. This other-Sherlock accepted the offered gift, and did not betray the vulnerability thus exposed. He had caressed and cherished John’s offered body, had quenched John’s waiting thirst with ice and kissing, had demonstrated that he wanted John. Needed him.

This fantasy was John perhaps ashamed of wanting to submit so entirely – hence being tied (hence _would it disgust you?)._ It was his wish fulfilment that Sherlock valued and treasured him, and would always come back.

It was John telling himself that Sherlock did really love him, and wouldn’t hurt him again, no matter how vulnerable he was.

Sherlock was not at all sure he wouldn’t hurt John again one day, but he was sure that he would never _intend_ to. That he was done with hurting John through neglect or through not realising what he wanted, or through not _admitting_ to what he wanted. He wanted John; he needed John; he _loved_ John; and John would _know_ that.

John, his voice breathy and tremulous with desire, continued speaking. “Or, you say…”

*

_“Or perhaps I’ll stand over you this time,” continues Sherlock, “And you can suck my cock. I’d like that. You want to do that. You want to lick me and suck me. You love that.”_

_John’s mouth opens wide and he waits, and his reward, a moment later, is the silky soft crown of Sherlock’s cock being guided, rubbed, back and forth along his lower lip. He opens wider and the head is pushed gently in, and John licks at the sticky slit; he lips over the thick, soft crown. The smooth, hot, tight skin of Sherlock’s thick shaft slides into his mouth. Not all the way. Sherlock is controlling this._

_John sucks and tongues the cock in his mouth. He feels the warmth of Sherlock’s thighs bracketing his head, the backs of Sherlock’s legs pressed against his shoulders, and he suckles the head of Sherlock’s prick and doesn’t mind that his own is straining and wet and untouched, because he gets to do this. He has no choice, and he wants no choice, he wants this, has wanted this, will want this, forever._

_But Sherlock moves away, drawing his prick out of John’s hungry mouth with a wet pop, because John is unwilling to relinquish him. But he has to, and John makes a sound of protest. Then two fingers slip into his mouth, and he sucks on those instead._

_And then he moans at fingers rubbing against his perineum and then against his hole – slick, sticky, wet fingers, rubbing little circles, rubbing back and forth, playing with his arse and then stopping to cup and roll his balls, and if his cock gets any harder he may come just from this…_

_And it all stops again. John pants for breath._

_And then a mouth kisses the arch of his left foot. The arch of the right. Two hands stroke his calves, then the backs of his thighs, and then squeeze the cheeks of his arse. They massage him there for a long time, and John can feel the heat rising from Sherlock’s body as he stands between John’s bound and spread thighs._

_And then those hands take him by the thighs and push and tilt and John, suspended and helpless, finds his bindings are part of an intricate pulley system. He is still anchored and comfortable and secure, but his legs are up in the air, spread so wide, and he can’t move or protest or resist, and he doesn’t want to._

_He can’t see but he feels Sherlock’s thumbs spread his cheeks and then he feels… damp cloth. Slow, careful, yet invasive, swipes, as Sherlock makes sure he’s utterly clean._

_“You’ll worry if I don’t,” says Sherlock, and the slightly rough cloth makes John tingle in anticipation. Any embarrassment he might feel is swamped by this sensation that is both tender and erotic…_

_*_

John’s expression was slightly at odds with the story telling, and he snuck a glance at Sherlock. Sherlock’s shirt was unbuttoned and he had kicked off trousers and pants; he was busy tugging on his own cock and licking his lips and staring at John’s hand slow-wanking himself. He clearly didn’t find anything odd in this part of the story.

And then Sherlock looked at him, piercingly.

“I want to do that, sometime. If you’ll let me.”

John could only nod, before closing his eyes again.

“When you’re done,” he went on, “You… you spread me and kiss… you kiss…”

*

_Sherlock kisses John’s little pucker the way he has kissed John’s scars, soft and exploring, licking lines. His tongue draws circles and figure eights and laps at him like a cat and wriggles inside, and John gasps and keens and even tries to spread his own legs wider to accommodate._

_Then Sherlock is speaking again, lube-slick fingers replacing his busy tongue._

_“I love doing this. Touching you everywhere. Tasting you everywhere. I love your nipples in my mouth. Your skin. I love the weight of your cock on my tongue. I love licking your arse.”_

_Sherlock has two fingers inside John now, sliding slow and maddening and perfect, in and out, while he caresses John’s perineum and balls with his thumb. John keens and whimpers and tries to push against Sherlock’s hand._

_“I love fucking you with my fingers, John. You are so responsive. Look at you.”_

_John still can’t see, but he feels Sherlock’s fingers inside him, against him, and his voice, like silk over his skin and a warm rumble in his ear and brain, and Sherlock’s other hand now wrapping around John’s cock and starting a slow pull, a languorous slide, so intense…_

_“I love this, John. You, like this. I love fucking you. I fucking love fucking you. I fucking love you.”_

*

“John. Let me. God. _Let me_.”

John’s hand stilled on his cock at Sherlock’s warm, eager, desperate voice so close, and Sherlock’s hand, tentative, on his thigh. He opened his eyes to Sherlock next to him, close enough to touch but not touching, except for that hand on his thigh.

“John. _Please_.”

John, dazed with lust and the mood of the story, looked into a matching dazed hunger in pale blue eyes, and nodded.

Sherlock, naked but for his shirt, rose to his knees and leaned down to lick John’s nipples, to suck on the nub of the left and then lick the tattoo, before kissing down John’s belly, kissing his navel, open-mouthed. John moaned and arched into the tongue that swirled there.

And then Sherlock shifted, lifting John’s leg so he could slot in between his thighs. He leaned along John’s body, then, to kiss his mouth.

“Hold onto the headboard,” he murmured between soft sucking kissing bites at John’s lower lip. John reached up and seized the bar across the top of the bedhead in both hands, holding tight.

Sherlock sat back on his heels, dragging his palms down John’s shoulders, chest, belly, down his thighs. His cock nudged against John’s arse as he moved, and they both gasped.

Sherlock dragged off his shirt and flung it aside. Then he slid his hands to the back of John’s thighs and lifted his legs. Paused. He frowned, thinking.

John moaned.

“Oh, John.” Sherlock’s voice was deep and thick with desire. “Will you trust me?”

John, panting, puzzled, drew a shaky breath and didn’t ask _to do what?_ or _why?_ He just said, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Sherlock leaned over John’s body again – John, not tied down but acting as though he was – and snagged the belt from his robe next to the pillow. John’s robe was hanging off the bedhead on the other side. Sherlock reached over and snagged that belt too.

Then he took each long, soft belt and looped each one around one of John’s legs, just above the back of the knee, and tied the other end around the bar of the bedhead, pulling it up. Pulling John’s legs up and wide. It wasn’t anything as secure or firm as the fantasy kinbaku – all John had to do was use his hands to untie the loose knots and be free. But John kept his tight grip on the bar, and looked at Sherlock intently, with desire-dark eyes, with absolute trust.

Sherlock hastily snatched up the lube from the bedside cupboard, too, and squished a huge amount of it into his hand, and then he was massaging it over John’s entrance, fingers rubbing circles and lines, hard then soft. Running a fingertip over delicate, sensitive skin to the warmth underneath John’s balls, then back again, and then he pressed a finger inside. Two. Moved them.

“I love fingering you, John. I love fucking you. I love your cock.”

John made a stuttering sound and arched into the touch.

“I want you,” said Sherlock, and he was thinking, _you want me to tie you up and tease you, to always come back to you, to give you pleasure, and to find pleasure in you. You want to be a gift to me. I accept it, John. I accept the gift and give myself back in full measure._

Sherlock took his own cock in hand and rubbed John’s entrance with the crown of it, leaking pre-come into the lube, and without pushing in, he leaned along John’s torso again, to kiss-bite again, to tell John, to make sure John _knew_ , “I want you; not for all the things you do for me, but for the things you do _to_ me. The things you _are_ to me. I want you and I need you. If I didn’t need you, I’d still want you. If I didn’t want you, I’d still need you. You are my Captain. You are my First Mate. You are mine. Mine. Mine. I’m not letting you go again. I am never being that stupid again.”

“Sh-sh-sherlock. Fuck. God. Please. Please. Please. Please.”

Sherlock drew back again, looking at John spread out before him, John incoherent with desire, begging, his prick thick and red and hard and wet; helplessly presenting his wet, slicked hole, his balls sticky too, drawing tight. Sherlock wrapped a hand around the base of John’s cock and squeezed, putting John’s building orgasm into abeyance.

“I want to fuck you, John. I’m going to, now,” He positioned himself and slowly rocked his hips; slowly breached John’s body. “I love fucking you,” he panted, “I love my cock inside you, and yours inside me.” Sherlock watched his prick glide into John’s hole, and he watched John try to flex his hips, to meet the so-welcome invasion, “Everything we do, John. Everything you fantasise as well. I love it all. I. Love. I. Want. Every. Part. Of. You.” Each word accompanied a rock of his hips, the pull of his hands on John’s hips to tug him closer, until his full length was seated inside John, John’s backside warm against Sherlock’s groin.

And then Sherlock began to move – not fast, but slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Kneeling, hands on John’s hips, fingers curling around them to the rise of John’s backside, so-slowly withdrawing, so slowly pushing back in. He was mesmerised by the sight of himself pushing in, pulling out, pushing in, by the wet sound of lube, the high hitching _ah ah ah ah_ from John, the incredible sensation of tight heat around his prick, of the walls of John’s body opening for him, of the small, jerking moves of John seeking more of him, and faster.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed, looking up at last to see John looking at him, wrecked, yes, but expectant.

 _He wants to see me too_ , Sherlock thought. _He wants to see me just as wrecked and just as ruined and just as helpless in this as he is. And I am. I am_.

“Give me everything John,” the words growled out of him, “I want it all, and I want you to have it all too. All of this. All of me. Even if it’s too much and I’m too much, I want, I want, fuck, yes. I want you.”

And slow and tortuous gave way to helpless rutting thrusts, his body driving into John’s. He gripped John’s hips and fucked him, gave in to his own pleasure, and to John’s, and he didn’t see the look of hungry satisfaction on John’s face when he came, eyes closed, crying out, utterly abandoned.

Then Sherlock folded over John’s chest and, heaving in air, nuzzled at John’s nipple. John’s erection was poking him in the belly, and he could hear John murmuring, “Yes. Yes. Love. You. Want. All. All of you. All. Yes.”

Sherlock pushed his hands against the bed so that he could rise up a little, and slither down, pulling out of John’s body. He managed to kneel between John’s upraised legs again, and pressed two fingers against his entrance, now leaking Sherlock’s come onto the bed.

He looked up at John through his eyelashes. “Don’t let go,” he said.

John renewed his grip on the bedhead.

Sherlock bent low and swallowed John’s aching prick down, and slid his fingers back into his arse, and he sucked John, swirling his tongue, and his fingers, finding all the sensitive places, inside and along his cock, and John held himself spread, offered up, wanton, and when he came his whole body shook and spasmed with the intensity of it.

Sherlock’s mouth gentled on him, and his fingers slipped free, and then Sherlock settled with a sigh, his cheek pillowed over John’s appendectomy scar. He turned his face to kiss and lick the spot, then settled again.

John fumbled with the robe belts, but a simple tug on the tail ends (once he could get his hands to grab hold of the tail ends) pulled them free and he could lower his legs at last. He wrapped them around Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock stroked John’s thigh.

Sherlock, still incapable of coherent speech, kissed John’s stomach. John reached down to ruffle his hair, then left his fingers tangled in the sweaty curls.

“Well,” John said after a while.

“Hmm.”

“So that’s a success, then. Fantasy Three.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re fucking amazing.”

Sherlock grinned against John’s skin, then looked up – over the topography of John’s ribs and chest and throat and jaw, up into his fiercely bright blue eyes.

“ _You’re mine_ ,” said Sherlock, just as fiercely, though he hadn’t known he was going to say that _. Definitely no more women for you,_ he thought, _and no more abstinence for me._

John grinned, giddily pleased with the claim. “Yes.”

“And I belong to you too,” Sherlock added. He frowned, and then his eyes danced. “You are my captain, and I’m yours.”

John hummed happily and flexed his fingers in Sherlock’s hair.

Sherlock made the effort to pull himself along John’s torso and then melted down again, listing to one side, and he nuzzled into John’s throat. “It is just you and me, in our crow’s nest. The rest of them can jump overboard for all I care.”

John grinned. He giggled. “They can’t do that. Who’ll sail the ship while we’re fucking each other senseless in the rigging?”

“And _now_ the details matter,” complained Sherlock, but he smiled against John’s throat, and John, sensing it, snickered again.

Sherlock gave a final, wrung out and satisfied sigh. John nuzzled at his hair and then shifted, pushing Sherlock off him and onto the mattress. He followed, though, nudging his nose against Sherlock’s tattoo and then folding into boneless ease, his head pillowed on Sherlock’s shoulder and an arm across his waist. “Love you,” he mumbled.

“Love you,” Sherlock mumbled back.

They cuddled, and let feeling come back to their extremities.

“Shower,” John muttered after a while.

“Mmm,” agreed Sherlock, not caring at all. Sometimes he liked this, wrapped up together afterwards, the two of them sweaty and sticky and smeared with material evidence.

Marked. Surrendering and submitting; owning and belonging to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> More tags will be added in Chapter two


End file.
